Five years ago Berliners voted to make the city’s biggest landlords sell. A referendum told the Senate to draft a law that would expropriate companies holding more than 3,000 flats in Berlin. The Senate never acted, because the result wasn’t binding, and DW reports that the average cost of a new lease has risen by about half since. In the Berlin election on 20 September the Left party, which campaigned on that referendum, won the largest share of the vote. Coalition talks decide what happens next.
That pressure isn’t Berlin’s alone, and DW notes the election has drawn attention again to the severity of the housing crisis in cities across Europe. Here’s what five of them are doing: Vienna owns the flats, Basel keeps the land, Paris buys back offices, Prague lets employers choose tenants, and Dublin sets rents by what the building cost. Each one changes what an agent can sell, let and promise.
Berlin Voted. Five Years On, Rents Are Still Rising
That 2021 referendum was unambiguous: Berliners told the Senate to take flats away from companies owning more than 3,000 units in the city. It treated the vote as advisory and did nothing with it, and DW reports new leases have climbed by around 50 percent since. Owners who were the target had no reason to sell.
- The referendum: passed in 2021, a draft law to expropriate landlords with more than 3,000 units
- The Senate: no action, because the result wasn’t binding
- The rents: new leases up by about half, according to DW
- The election: the Left party, which campaigned on the referendum, took the largest share
- The next step: coalition negotiations, which are not a law
A vote, an election and a law are three different things, and only the third changes a tenancy. That gap is where the arguments happen, and owners in a city with an active expropriation debate will ask about it long before anything is drafted. In Berlin, nothing has changed for a landlord yet, and rising rents are why the question is still open.
How Vienna Became Europe’s Largest Landlord
The Vienna model is the oldest answer here and the one with the most property in it. The city’s social housing office counts roughly 220,000 municipal flats and around 200,000 subsidised dwellings across some 1,800 estates, which makes Vienna the largest municipal housing provider in Europe. It dates from the years after the First World War, when the city was so short of beds that workers slept in shifts and tuberculosis spread through crowded flats.
How much of the city lives on the public side depends on who’s counting, so settle that before quoting a figure. DW puts the share of residents in those two housing types above 60 percent; the city’s own social housing office says roughly 50 percent. Use the conservative sentence with a client: around half of Vienna rents from the city or a subsidised cooperative. For a rental market, that’s the anchor, because a private landlord here competes with a landlord that never needs a profit.
Basel Leases Public Land Instead of Selling It
Basel attacks the same problem from the ground up. Rather than selling a municipal plot to the highest bidder, the city leases it, usually to a cooperative or an investor who accepts the conditions attached to the lease. Because the land is never sold, its price never enters the rent, and DW reports that about 40 percent of Basel’s cooperative housing units sit on public land. Councils like it because they don’t pay for construction; developers like it because they don’t carry the land price that would otherwise reach tenants. Barcelona and Lisbon have stepped up similar programmes.
A lease like that is also a warning about comparables. Two blocks a street apart can be worth very different amounts when one stands on leased public land and the other on a plot that was bought and sold. One is a rented asset with a permanent cap attached, the other is tradeable. When a client asks why the cooperative block over the road is cheap and the flats beside it aren’t, the answer is who owns the ground.
What Paris, Prague and Dublin Are Trying
Paris had to work with land already in private hands. Its 2014 anti-displacement plan gives the municipality a first right of refusal in gentrifying neighbourhoods, and the target is 30 percent social housing for low-income residents by 2035. Earlier this year the French government and the Paris regional authorities identified 61 empty office buildings that could become housing, creating up to 8,200 homes in the inner suburbs. Conversion is the closest thing here to new supply, and an agent in those suburbs can watch it happen.
Prague went after a different constraint: the key workers it can’t run without. It has just built 660 energy-efficient flats for caregivers, police officers, teachers and sanitation workers, developed by a subsidiary of a Czech bank with European loans. Rents are meant to sit 20 percent below market through economies of scale, and it isn’t the bank that picks the tenants: hospitals and public agencies do, and they draw up the leases, which hands a hospital something concrete to offer a nurse.
Dublin’s instrument is a tenure rather than a building. Cost rental, introduced in 2021, targets households who earn too much for public housing and too little to compete privately. In the four Dublin local authority areas the net income ceiling is €66,000, and €59,000 elsewhere in Ireland. Rents are calculated on 40 years of financing, building, management and maintenance, and must sit at least 25 percent below the local market. The government wants 18,000 low-cost rental homes by the end of the decade, and last year more than 4,200 households applied for 104 flats in one new Dublin suburb.
| City | The instrument | Who gets in | What it does to your market |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vienna | City-owned and subsidised flats | Uniform, means-tested criteria | Half the city rents below market, capping private landlords |
| Basel | Public land leased, never sold | Cooperatives and lease-bound investors | Rented stock with the cap built into the ground |
| Paris | First right of refusal, office conversion | 30 percent social housing by 2035 | Up to 8,200 homes in the inner suburbs |
| Prague | Employer-linked apartments | Public-sector staff, chosen by employers | 660 homes at 20 percent below market |
| Dublin | Cost rental | Households under €66,000 in Dublin | At least 25 percent below market, by lottery |
What This Means for Agents in Those Markets
None of the five is designed to make buying cheaper, which is the first thing to tell a client looking at one of these cities. Cities are adding affordable housing and protecting it, and in Vienna and Basel much of the stock will never be sold at all. That doesn’t erase your market, but it changes the ceiling and the competition, and an owner should hear it before setting an asking rent.
- Find out who owns the ground and who owns the flats. Municipal stock is let, not sold, and a cooperative share isn’t a freehold, so check the resale rules for the building in front of you.
- Read the eligibility line, because it decides who leaves your buyer list. Dublin’s €66,000 ceiling separates a client who can compete from one who has joined a lottery.
- Work out what the non-market rent does to your number. Where half a city rents below market, the ceiling on a private rent is set by the public sector, not by your last comparable.
- Watch the pipeline, not the announcement. The Paris conversions, Prague’s next tranche and Dublin’s 18,000-home target each take demand out of a neighbourhood.
- Ask about pre-emption before you market a building. Where a city holds a first right of refusal, it can step in ahead of your buyer and a settled sale can go another way.
Where City Housing Policy Is Heading Next
Housing policy in 2026 is moving away from rent freezes and towards ownership. Cities are buying, leasing and building rather than only regulating, and the older examples show how durable that is: Vienna has run its model for a century, and Basel leased its land long before affordable became a policy word. Prague’s employer flats and Dublin’s cost rental show the same instinct with less money.
Berlin is the reminder that politics can move faster than law, and that a housing shortage doesn’t wait for either. An 18,000-home programme is a promise until the keys are handed over, which is why the delivery numbers are worth checking each year. Keep a note of which instrument is live in each city you work in, who qualifies, and what it takes off the market, and your client hears the rules from you rather than from a headline.
Questions Agents Are Asking About City Housing
Did Berlin’s expropriation vote change anything for owners?
No. That referendum wasn’t binding, the Senate didn’t act on it, and DW reports that rents on new leases are up by about half in the meantime. The September election gave the Left party the strongest hand in the coalition talks, so a draft law is possible, but nothing changes for a landlord until a law exists and survives the courts.
Can an agent rent or sell a Vienna municipal flat?
Entry to municipal housing runs through the city, not the market: allocation uses uniform, means-tested criteria that deliberately include middle incomes. Around half of Vienna lives in municipal or subsidised housing, which is why the private tenancies you handle sit under a ceiling set outside the market. Treat municipal stock as tenanted housing rather than sale stock, and check the rules for each estate.
Why is Basel’s cooperative housing cheaper than the block beside it?
Because the ground belongs to the city and is leased rather than sold. With no land price to recover, the rent covers the building, its financing and its upkeep, and about 40 percent of Basel’s cooperative units sit on public land. The flats next door carry a land price in their rent, so the two aren’t comparable.
Who qualifies for cost rental in Dublin?
A household with a net income below €66,000 in the four Dublin local authority areas, or below €59,000 elsewhere in Ireland, that receives no social housing supports and matches the size of the advertised home. Applications go to the approved housing body, council or Land Development Agency running the scheme, and successful applicants are chosen by lottery. Rents must sit at least 25 percent below the local market.
Do these schemes bring purchase prices down for buyers?
Mostly not. Four of the five grow and protect rented stock, and in Vienna that stock never reaches the open market. Paris is the exception, where converting 61 empty office buildings into as many as 8,200 homes in the inner suburbs adds supply where buyers already look.
